No peace without land, insists Lumumba

While many may have hung onto every last word which came from the lips of former US president Barack Obama, South Africans should have been paying far greater attention to Professor Patrick Lumumba’s Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture.

The renowned African scholar insists that without land there would be no peace in Africa.

He was delivering the lecture at the Walter Sisulu University’s Mthatha campus to commemorate the centenary celebrations of Tata Madiba’s birth.

Lumumba says we must ask ourselves what Madiba would have said on the 100th year of his birth.

“What if he were alive today, what would he have said? I suspect he would have said many things,” he says.

“Until the day you tackle the question of land, you shall never know peace, you shall never know true peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding.

“He would have told those who are listening to him that every situation demands a solution that is unique to its circumstances.

“He would have prevailed on the South Africans that the solution lies within yourselves and that there is wisdom in resolving the problem, rather than postponing the problem.

“I have no doubt that you would have listened to Madiba,” Lumumba says.

Lumumba says Madiba would have reminded South Africans about the value of history.

“He would have told us that history is only valuable to the extent that it reminds us and warns us that we must never repeat the mistakes that we make, but he would have gone silent and said that the tragedy of humanity is that we learn nothing from history.”

Lumumba was also in conversation with POWER Talk host Iman Rappetti on Wednesday.